Ukraine has designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.
The move aligns Kyiv with the European Union, which labelled the IRGC a terrorist group and imposed a new set of sanctions against Iran.
“(T)he European Union has agreed to designate one of the main organisations of the regime in Iran, the so-called Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as a terrorist organisation,” President Zelensky said in his video address.
“European procedures are currently underway. We in Ukraine have already made this decision and designated this organisation as terrorist. For us, this issue is closed.”
The IRGC was added to Ukraine’s formal list of groups designated as terrorist organisations on January 30, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) web portal.
The IRGC is a powerful and elite branch of Iran’s armed forces, established after the Iranian revolution in 1979. The unit has already been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and several other countries.
Ukraine’s and Europe’s designation of the branch as a terrorist group follows the Iranian government’s brutal crackdown on recent anti-regime protests across the country. Tehran’s violent repression is believed to have killed thousands of demonstrators.
“The whole world sees what is happening in Iran, how many people have been killed, and how the Iranian regime has contributed to the spread of war and violence in the region and the world,” Zelensky said.
